Highlighting the obtuse, the slanted and sometimes just plain ignorant writings found in The Gray Lady

Month: November 2016

For years The New York Times has kneeled down before the powers of Communist Mainland China and refused to acknowledge in print that the free island nation Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign nation independent from the corrupt, criminal communist mainland China.

That, apparently, has changed.

In an opinion piece published in The Times on Saturday, 26 November 2016, the editorial writers clearly stated:

“Taiwan should become another nation to recognize that love is love, regardless of sexual orientation.”

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The definition of nation clearly states that it is “independent” and a “sovereign state.”

Never before has The New York Times ever admitted that Taiwan was anything other than a renegade province of the communist mainland China. This is the Party line that Mainland China has forced upon news corporations and businesses and even the United Nations in its attempts to isolate the democratic nation of Taiwan.

Communist China has used its police powers and its power over who is allowed to do business in the country to keep countries and corporations bowing down to them for decades and most countries and corporations have willingly taken the boot of the communists and shined it clean for the sake of their own profits.

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We congratulate The New York Times for their brave, courageous stance, knowing they alone are standing against a tidal wave of forced economic censorship and the military brutality that Communist China threatens Taiwan with every day.

(Then again, we’re probably pretty sure it’s the really inexperienced punk writers that The Times has recently hired that made this massive error. And NYT’s publisher A.O. Sulzberger, Jr. will soon be called onto the carpet and forced to kowtow to the Communist bullies from the mainland so he will be able to keep doing business over there.)

The virulently anti-gay, anti-diversity, Antediluvian VP-elect Mike Pence is a born-again Christian who as governor of the backwoods state of Indiana did all he could to turn back the clock to witch-burning times.

The nation has no concept of the pure doltishness of Michael Pence, but they are about to find out.

Clueless news outlets like The New York Times make fatuous claims that Pence somehow will provide a steadying hand to Trump simply because Pence has some experience in public office.

Those who know know that Pence has sawdust for brains. And his record in private practice and in public service show repeatedly his wits are as leaden as the water coming out of a Flint, Michigan water faucet.

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And our President-Elect is already firing off Twitter threats – This time against a Broadway cast.

My gawd.

The terrorists of the world are laughing. Now they know if they attack America after Donald J. Trump is president, all they have to fear is a Twitter demand for an apology.

We couldn’t get away from numerous breathless media reviews of Saturday’s SNL post-election broadcast with host Dave Chappelle. It seems America couldn’t figure out what happened so they expected a lackluster collection of hack comedians – Chappelle excluded – to explain it to them.

And gee, did they get an unexpected bellyful of hoots.

Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton attempted to co-opt a Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah” with lyrics that made even the most casual Hillary follower roll their eyes: “I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you…”

Uh-humm. Comedy scribes can’t re-write history. And Hillary was hardly a truth-teller. So how is it a comedy show is trying to get America all misty-eyed over one of the most hardened political operators to have run on the Democratic ticket for decades? Hillary’s own campaign aides were on a constant mission throughout the campaign to make her seem “more likeable,” to get her to be more “genuine.”

To have an SNL performer portray Clinton as some bluesy, down-to-earth tragic figure belies the fact that only fools take the political opinions of entertainers seriously. No wonder all these people never saw it coming – they really didn’t get Clinton.

Really. The majority of Americans who voted for Clinton did so with the clear-eyed vision that she was a very imperfect candidate.

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It must be said that those millions who tune into SNL have become the unquestioning, undemanding echo-chamber types.

You want to see something raw and relevant from SNL? Go back to its first season, 1975, when Richard Prior hosted for the first time. Up until then the episodes were choppy and had no direction. Suddenly, with Prior, SNL had an attitude and an “in your face” identity.

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If you want to know about SNL today, like anything, look behind the scenes: Lorne Michaels, the producer, has nothing on his mind but money deals with his money partners, and this drives who he hand-picks to be on the show, grooming them for later production deals with which he can make more millions.

NBC/Universal. It’s a multi-billion multi-national corporation formerly owned by…megalithic GE. Now owned by…Comcast, an octopus of a media corporation that is looking for control of everything from theme parks to Telemundo to MSNBC to Dreamworks. They want to control content and then they want to control how you receive that content.

That’s Orwellian.

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But, hey. You just want to watch some funny skits. Get distracted. Forget about all the big issues.

That’s what they want you to do, too. And they don’t want you to notice them while they’re doing it.

Donald Trump stated on “60 Minutes” that he would attempt to seat a Supreme Court Justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Trump stated he wanted the option of abortion to be tossed back to the state level – like slavery used to be a state level issue.

If a woman wanted an abortion and it was illegal in her state then, Trump said, she could just “go to another state.”

We wonder if our billionaire president will pay for her bus fare for that theoretical trip. Or alternatively, will he help raise and support and put through school and then employ all the millions of unwanted children that will be born when abortion is made illegal.

An anecdote: A friend who is a university teacher told us of a post-election class where many of their students were so distraught about the Trump election. The teacher then asked how many had voted.

No one raised their hands.

Meanwhile, thousands are storming through the streets across America. We wonder how many of them can actually name their local congressman. Or how many had voted.

Before anyone goes out to cause a ruckus in the cites of America they need to show proof they actually showed up to vote last week. Otherwise, they are pretenders to this revolution.

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We had a record low voter turnout in this most-important election in 2016. Only 55%. A 20 year low according to news reports.

And everyone’s surprised about the results?

Shouldn’t that be news? That in the most important election in our recent history almost half the nation chose to say “I don’t care”?

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Earlier this year there were protests across the UK when the nation voted for the Brexit resolution, catching many of the young, urbanite population offguard. They hadn’t voted either. It was a big, rural voter turnout that enabled Brexit to go forward. So, those who didn’t vote, protested. Too late.

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There are times for protests. This isn’t one of them. If it makes you feel better, howl at the moon. Get it out of your system.

Then, go to work. Organize. Talk to other people. Go online and get information. Find your senator and representative. Contact them. Don’t be angry. Come up with some positive ideas. Know other people like yourself who are concerned? Form a group. Organize. Get more members. Meet at your local library. Don’t like what the Democrats/Republicans did? Start your own party. Or join the local Democratic/Republican party and see what you and your friends can do about making changes.

But that’s not going to change anything. Real change takes a lot of work. Real change takes a lot of…organization. People-to-people work. Not staring into the smartphone stuff. And these days that’s all you see around you, people staring into their phones, attention span, well, wait, my phone just beeped!

Protesting is easy. Just check the location of the latest protest site on your phone and head over. Walk down the street. Hold a sign.Yell.

Protesting, at this point, is a sign of weakness. You may think you are empowering yourself. You may think you are validating your viewpoint or emotions. You may feel better about yourself. But, as any adult should tell you, feelings are short term.

Protesters? Essentially, you’re throwing a temper tantrum cause you lost and the other side won.

And isn’t THAT what Trump and his minions threatened to do if they lost?

( Suggestion: If you happen to be at a protest, grab a bunch of them and take them home for a political organizing coffee-clatch where you can get some real work done!)

Face it. Trump won the presidency because the Democratic Party of these United States of America shoved Hillary Clinton down our collective throats as their benighted candidate before the primary season even began.

The Wikileaks emails from the Democratic National Party proved that they derailed Bernie Sanders candidacy and did all they could for Clinton. But anyone following the campaign knew this before any leaks confirmed it.

And Hillary Clinton, the quintessential Washington insider without a moral or ethical compass who has, over the years, grown a shell around her as hard as a 300 year old turtle, has never owned up to any mistake she or her husband have ever committed over the tempestuous decades of their careers.

And she still doesn’t get it.

The news reports have Hillary blaming her election loss not on her massive personal and campaign shortcomings but on the fillip of FBI Director James Comey’s late-term mis-steps.

We still point to our own report early in the campaign when Hillary was at a big private fundraiser in some big mansion where a young black woman managed somehow to gain entrance and challenge Clinton about her husband’s crime policies. What did Hillary do? Her henchmen threw the young woman out of the mansion.

That’s how Hillary courted the black vote – in private and reality. She ignored them and had them tossed out of her mansion while taking huge checks from the money men.

That’s what Hillary Clinton has been doing for years with her husband. The evidence is all over the place. Even her own daughter Chelsea tried to stop the corruption when they brought her into the Clinton Foundation and Chelsea found out about $100,000 handshake meetings businesses gave her dad while supposedly doing “charity” yet dad Bill kept the money.

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And America’s Democratic Party and most of the media went right along with the attempt to christen Hillary Clinton as the Savior of America – The Agent of Change. A fighter for the downtrodden.

Hillary Clinton was a half-dead horse they all dressed up as a Kentucky Derby Winner.

It didn’t work.

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It comes down to a lack of Leadership.

There was no leadership in the Democratic Party and they failed the American people. Someone like Bernie Sanders who was a true believer and who had grown his own movement into a genuine power was thwarted.

There was no leadership in the Republican Party.

Over and over again Republicans like party chairman Reince Preibus said they had to “respect the wishes of the electorate” when they voted for Donald Trump. But primary victories are notoriously won by appealing to small, narrow sections of the population. And Trump did this through craven race-bating, hate-mongering that no one ever stood up to. And when the ugliness worked on that small level, he took it to a higher level. And now there is, literally, going to be a buffoon in the White House. A twittering, bankruptcy-loving, vindictive small-minded man who holds grudges against anyone who he thinks has slighted him in any way whatsoever.

And that man is in control of the biggest armed force in the world.

We know this: He is a little man and he is scared to death. He has no one around him of any experience who has any proper national or international expertise and when the media cites his VP Mike Pence everyone should know Pence was a second-rate governor of a sparsely populated Midwest state who botched every policy in that state he had to deal with.

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But we’ll survive.

Good people rise up in difficult times. We’ll need lots of good people – citizens and politicians.

Don’t expect or trust the media to do anything constructive. The media has their own agenda and at the bottom of that agenda…is corporate profits. (When Trump first appeared the CBS News president at a meeting declared it “was bad for America but great for our ratings!” That tells you all you need to know. When you read something, question the source, question the writer, question their agenda.

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People who supported Trump all have their own agendas. We prefer to make the distinction that their choices are made out of ignorance – a lack of information.

We believe – strongly – that Donald Trump will NEVER follow through on his strongly stated goals. We believe when Trump does take action it will be blunderbuss-worthy. Eventually, all those who supported him will see him as the charlatan he always has been. There will be corrections driven by an enlightened electorate.

It’s only 2 years till the next election…

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Besides, how many millions of those who voted for Hillary knew they were voting for a very imperfect candidate who, if elected, would never have done anything noteworthy, would never have followed through with all those policies that she never had until Bernie Sanders made her realize they were what America wanted ( Income inequality? It cannot be denied that the Clintons took in over $20 million in speaking fees to Wall Street and multi-nationals, as per their tax returns).

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Yes, there is that Supreme Court issue. We’ll have to come back to that…

Walk into any Walmart Superstore. It’s full of Trump supporters. People whose incomes have been driven down and are left to scrounge around the aisles for Chinese-made products at “low prices” that for them are all they can afford.

And Sam Walton’s relatives are all Arkansas billionaires living off the backs of the poverty of the American people and thanks to the Chinese government’s trade policy and Chinese slave-level labor practices. (Yes, feel free to ignore those propaganda commercials Walmart runs about “Made In America.” Simply look at the boxes of every product on the shelves and see for yourself the Made In China facts.)

Do those Trump voters comprehend the economic forces behind this? No. And ignorance drives Trump’s supporters. (Note: ignorance here is merely a lack of knowledge, not a slur on intelligence.)

Starting in the 1980’s it has been common practice in top US business schools – yes, even Trump’s own alma mater Wharton School of Business- that a corporation must lower production costs at the expense of everything in order to enrich executives and shareholders. No longer was a company essentially a well-tuned operation of workers and management and executives all striving for the good of the company. It all became “Profits Uber Alles.”

[For one of the best dramatizations of this see the 1954 film “Executive Suite” Dir. by Robert Wise with William Holden. (Okay, you’ll have to put up with June Allyson’s saccharine act but try to ignore that.) William Holden’s inspiring performance alone could make any schoolchild want to be an entrepreneur!]

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How many Fox News viewers even know the history of their beloved network’s patriarch, Rupert Murdoch? How many know about the bastard out of Australia who bought up papers in the UK, honed in on yellow journalism and turned politics so ugly until they were illegally spying on the Royal Family and blackmailing politicians?

How many know that Murdoch had a specific, crass agenda when he made his huge Fox purchase to gain entry to the US? That he was going to use it to twist people ’round a rigid, very focused right-wing agenda? And then Murdoch followed through on that plan. And how he later purchased Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal so he could espouse crackpot right-wing theories through one of America’s most respected economic newspapers?

Really, how many know this?

And the joke is all those millions of Fox New-heads believe there is a Great Left Wing Media Conspiracy when they don’t know that they are the lemmings of the Weathered, Withering Lizard Rupert Murdoch. It’s great comedy. Really, it is.

In a Shakespearean way, Murdoch’s sons are ensconced in Hollywood running his entertainment empire and worried how the network’s right-wing politics might damage the brand’s West Coast business. At last word, the sons weren’t too worried and were even willing to let the network run wild, to the point of letting Fox run those vitriolic, anti-Semitic campaign commercials created by…the NRA. (And, really, isn’t that scary enough? Do you think Hollywood will just lie down for this, simply because Fox has money and, now, political power?)

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Our friends on the Left don’t get left out of this, either. Wednesday morning what did millions of Americans see on their doorsteps with their New York Times? The massive headline:

HER REIGN BEGINS

And inside:

WE HAVE A NEW LEADER: A WOMAN. LET US GIVE HER A CELEBRATION THAT IS BEFITTING OF THE WIND OF CHANGE SHE REPRESENTS: MODERN AND FORWARD-LOOKING.

And Americans wondered “What the f*ck?” until they realized The New York Times and Netflix had BOTH got it so wrong in their printed 4-page advert wraparound for a TV series about some queen on a VERY WRONG morning.

That’s how blindered, how off-base, how out of touch the New York Times and the Left Wing media is with the broad swath of America that actually voted for Donald J. Trump.

CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Huffington Post. They just don’t get it. They have created their own echo chambers of unquestioning non-journalistic thinking where all the hot button issues of economics, race, trade, immigration and foreign affairs have set answers.

And any discussion on those issues are dealt with as battles, face-offs between combatants.

Well, not exactly. There are the dunderheads like Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Chuck Todd who have no concept of rhetoric or a pungent follow-up question and would have allowed Richard Nixon off the hook for Watergate. It is exceptional that these personalities – yes, personalities because we cannot call them journalists – do not accept the fundamental belief that it is their JOB to get to the TRUTH of a politician’s statement. They let a politician say whatever they want, and let the court of public opinion decide what is “true” or not.

Look where that got us.

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We cannot allow The Media to create the False Narratives that they have throughout this election cycle.

The Media, left-wing, right-wing, – in production meetings behind the scenes that the public is never privy to – set agendas. Those agendas are never in the cause of a Healthy Political Discourse.

The Media wants friction. The Media wants and thrives on conflict.

When we are making decisions that will affect the course of our lives and the future of the nation we must have discourse that is cool and level-headed, even with those of opposing viewpoints. Because politics is always about compromise – Look at the past. Look at those oft-referenced Founding Fathers who compromised, compromised, compromised and eventually came up with some very good ground plans for a youthful nation.

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On a holistic level, go outside, look at Nature. It’s Fall. Everything is cyclical. Trees lose their leaves but they’ll be back come Spring. There are fallow periods and there are bountiful times.

Or, to go with a sports analogy: As the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers told all his panicked fans during a losing streak the team was having: “Hey, relax.”

And he was right. The Packers started winning again. And the world was okay, again.